HIA Threshold Analysis

The HIA Threshold Analysis Workbook is a more detailed spreadsheet-based assessment that focuses on proven health thresholds and associations related to topics of concern to urban planners. This sets it apart from both HIAs dealing with general health and social issues, and from HIAs oriented toward planners, but including a long list of possible issues including those for which no conclusive research on health effects exists.

This Design For Health (DFH) threshold workbook is a score-based system not unlike others used in planning and urban development, such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) and LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC) ratings systems. It is designed to be shorter and simpler to use than many of these, however, and its focus is human health rather than the natural environment. The spreadsheet itself is easy to fill in and provides specific guidance about information that is needed. However, assembling the information could well take some days and even weeks.

Participation and Planning for Health: How can the public participate in planning for health? Which DFH tools can be used in participation processes or modified for such use? This fact sheet deals with these two issues.

Communicating about Health Impacts (80 KB)HIA tools produce a large amount of useful information about various health topics, the location of health impacts, and who is affected by a project, plan, or policy. This DFH fact sheet presents practical ideas for presenting information about the HIA process and the findings of HIA studies to a variety of audiences.

Health Data
This section provides tools on how to access information about health within your community as well on how to measure the effects that the built environment has on certain health issues.

Additional HIA Information

The Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) (2007)
Developed by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the HDMT is an evidence-based practice to consider public-health objectives in land use planning. It provides land-use planners, public agencies, and community stakeholders with a set of metrics to assess the extent to which urban development projects, plans and policies affect health. Click here for a pdf version of the tool.

LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND)
The LEED-ND rating system integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism, and green building into the first national standard for neighborhood design. LEED certification provides independent, third-party verification that a development’s location and design meet accepted high standards for environmentally-responsible, -sustainable development.

LEED for New Construction (LEED-NC)
LEED-NC is a green building rating system that was designed to guide and distinguish high-performance commercial and institutional projects, with a focus on office buildings. Practitioners have also applied the system to K-12 schools, multi-unit residential buildings, manufacturing plants, laboratories, and many other building types.